Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts

I had Cream of Chicken Soup for my lunch today. Try as I might, I cannot enjoy it fully for not being engulfed in memories when I open the tin and smell the soup.

When I was five or six and had packed lunches at school, we congregated in Room 9, which was a redundant class room used only for extra-curricular activities including art and music and pack lunches.

We sat at ye olde worlde school desks, the type with the metal frame housing both seat and desk with flip top lid and ink well. I had a little fat flask, which in itself was a luxury not afforded to everyone. Flasks in those days (christ I'm making myself sound ancient), were glass and prone to breaking with the slightest knock. I was a very trusted child to have not only my own flask but to be allowed to take it to school.

However, my soup of the day, was ALWAYS Cream of Chicken. Even when it was Tomato, it was Cream of Chicken. The smell and the taste of Cream of Chicken Soup remained days after it was gone. Days after it had been seeped. The smell of it made me heave slightly. But I was a good girl, and drank it out of my stubby, fat cup, while I ate my corn beef sandwiches.

So I drank my soup today, and decided to exorcise the ghost of Chicken Soups past by telling you. And cheered myself considerably, by looking at Bernadette's replacement. Rosemary's Babys.

As I told Shunzi this morning, they are Daffydils. And will bloom on Friday.
He didn't look convinced.